Charleroi mayor steps down from beleaguered theater board

With restorations to the Coyle Theater in Charleroi stalled for more than a decade, the board that owns the building is moving in a new direction to bolster the project.
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CHARLEROI – The mayor of Charleroi stepped down this week as chairman of a nonprofit organization that has struggled for more than a decade to raise money to restore an historic theater in the borough.

Barry Cassidy, a consultant appointed by the Mid Mon Valley Cultural Trust to seek money for the Coyle Theater project, confirmed Charleroi Mayor Nancy Ellis is no longer associated with the trust.

“The trust has no comment,” Cassidy said.

Ellis has since 2002 led the trust, which purchased the building at 331 McKean Ave. originally built in the late 1890s as a burlesque house. The Coyle family later converted it into a 1,000-seat movie theater, which closed in 1999.

By 2009, the trust owed $14,000 in unpaid property taxes. In January, the Washington County Redevelopment Authority pulled a nearly $180,000 grant from the local share of the pot at The Meadows Casino in North Strabane Township from the trust because it failed to show it had raised enough money to see the work through.